The Empire Builder
You think in TAMs. You raise to win the category, not survive the quarter.
What you bring
You see five moves ahead. You know which markets will consolidate and you're positioning to be one of the consolidators. You raise capital strategically, hire ahead of the curve, and build with category leadership as the only acceptable outcome.
Where you get stuck
Optimism distortion on burn. You sometimes mistake aggression for strategy. You can over-hire ahead of revenue and find yourself running a 60-person company that needed to be a 12-person company for another year.
The decisions that trip you up
- Are we burning at the right pace, or are we three months from a problem?
- When does adjacent expansion accelerate us, vs. dilute the core?
- Should I raise the next round now or in nine months?
What you should be reading
Adviserry retrieves from all of these so you don't have to keep up.
a16z (Future, Andreessen Horowitz)
Category-creation playbooks, venture-scale GTM, market structure analysis
Sequoia Capital essays
Operating frameworks for the venture-funded growth stage
Stratechery (Ben Thompson)
Strategic analysis of platform shifts and category structures
Lenny Rachitsky
PM and growth leadership at scale, with named operators from category leaders
Other archetypes
The Margin Hawk
You know your unit economics down to the cent. Growth at a loss makes you twitch.
The Distribution-First Builder
You'd rather own a 100K-person audience than a perfect product. Distribution beats novelty.
The Product-Led Polymath
You believe a great product sells itself. PLG metrics are your love language.
The Operator-Operator
You optimize funnels for a living. Every step has a metric, every metric has an owner.